4th Grade

I lovvved how this project turned out. First we talked about Gustav Klimt's Tree of Life. Then we talked about if we were to make a Tree of Life about our own lives, what important things in our lives would make up the branches? The students took a class period to write about this question, as well as drawing the tree they talked about. We used a bunch of rope that was made of paper that had been tightly bound together. We used that rope to create a tree trunk, then spritzed it brown with some liquid watercolor and lightly brushed gold onto the trunk. We glued the trunk to a wooden base and used tissue paper to make grass/flowers. We then unraveled the ends of the rope and spritzed them two different colors with liquid watercolor. Lastly, we twisted pipe cleaners around the trees and added small aluminum foil shapes to the pipe cleaners.

For this project, we painted half our paper and then folded it in half. We then went over those newly pressed lines again with paint to make sure they were nice, solid lines. The next class, we used chalk to color in the wings.

With my fourth graders, I read to them about Georgia O'Keefe. I then started off the demo by talking to them about the placement of their flower on their paper. I talked to them about how expert artists don't put stuff right in the middle of the page, they set it off to one side. I then showed them some pictures of flowers and talked about how the petals were the same shape, they just became increasingly larger the further they got from the center of the flower. So I drew a quick drawing of a flower, showing how the petals grew and grew and how each layer was offset from the previous one. They were given a sheet with a variety of different types of flowers that they could reference while drawing. We then painted using warm colors. I tried to emphasize to them to place little 'bursts of color' from the bottom of each petal. I think this point largely fell on deaf ears. Lastly, they will come back in with black and outline their petals, as well as painting the background. The examples below are my paintings. Some of them are finished and some of them aren't.

This is another lesson that I was observed by a university professor. We watched a short video on George Rodrigue's Blue Dog. I then showed them how to draw a dog by breaking it down into simple shapes. We then talked about tints and shades and went on a tint and shade scavenger hunt, photographing any t&s with our iPad's. They then painted their dogs in tints and shades of blue. Lastly, they added details such as spots, collars, etc with cray-pas.

Black River Falls has a large fiberglass orange moose outside of one of its restaurants. We used this as inspiration for a pop-art/Warhol inspired project. The students folded their sheets into fourths. Then they traced a moose onto each square that had been folded. Then they traced the moose in black marker. We then talked about complimentary colors. The students outlined their moose with a crayon and then used watercolors to paint them complimentary colors.

My fourth graders focus on Wisconsin history in their Social Studies class. Because of this, we focus on artwork dealing with Wisconsin. Trek bikes are made in Wisconsin so we brought in several bikes for still-lifes.The students were asked to really observe all the little details of the bike. The bike could be de-constructed on their page with different parts in different locations. They then painted their bike parts black using India ink. We talked about contrast in this lesson.